


Morning Routine

by Pollydoodles



Series: The Wider Pizza-Verse [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:58:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5959732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers has an unknown superpower that most people will never be aware of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning Routine

Steve Rogers has an unknown superpower that most people will never be aware of. 

The Captain, for all he was a morning person once dressed and fed, still stumbled half-blind into his en-suite bathroom every day upon waking and managed to brush his teeth whilst still, to all intents and purposes, functionally asleep. 

The few who do know about it, have seen it in action, would possibly be surprised to learn that this is not actually a side-effect of the serum. It wasn’t even something bred into him by the army. Steve Rogers was born with the ability to sleep-walk his way through his morning routine, and the serum didn’t have a lick to do with it. Sometimes, he reflected, it was about the only useful thing that he’d started off with. That, and Bucky. 

It’s because of this unlikely talent, he doesn’t realise he’s not alone until he’s finished and turning to grab a towel. 

“What- Buck- jeez.” 

“Hi Steve.” 

Bucky stares up at him from the bath, and Steve grasps the towel rail, ignoring the heat from it that burns across his palm as he does so, slightly ashamed at the way his breath has caught and his heart is racing. Looking over at his friend, he finds himself fleetingly grateful for the first – and possibly last – time, that Darcy had introduced Bucky to the concept of bubble bath. As with most things Bucky takes to these days, he’s overdone it, and it looks like a cloud has exploded in Steve’s bath. 

Bubbles pile high over the edge of the bath, and Bucky himself is only really visible from the shoulders up. His dark hair is soaking wet and plastered to his head. Steve huffs, leans forward, and brushes some errant strands that have fallen over Bucky’s blue eyes. Bucky smiles at the brief contact. 

“Is there any point in me asking why you’re in the bath – my bath – at five o clock in the morning?” Steve said with the inbred patience of a man who’d long-since accepted that this sort of question was going to be a regular occurrence. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Ran out.” Bucky responded, thrusting a bottle towards Steve for inspection, and running his free hand through his shaggy wet hair. Steve tried to ignore the water that splattered up the walls and across the floor as a result of it. Instead, he looked down at the bottle in his hand. 

The empty bottle. 

The empty bottle of the shampoo he’d picked up at the store just yesterday. 

The nice shampoo he’d picked up yesterday. 

Steve sighed heavily and reminded himself that Bucky was his best friend and that he couldn’t begrudge him anything, not after what he’d been through and the horrors he’d been subject to. That he was grateful beyond belief, every day, that when he woke up Bucky was there – more or less whole, and that it was more, far more, than Steve had ever allowed himself to hope for in the darkest days following the fall of SHIELD. 

That the lonely prayers he’d given every night had actually been answered, since he’d clung to the side of a speeding train and wept bitter tears into the icy wind, and watched on as the man who’d been closer to him than his own family dropped away screaming and been unable to do anything about it. 

Steve reminded himself of that three or four times before he re-opened his eyes and dumped the empty bottle in the waste bin under the sink. 

“Funny, looks like I did, too.” He said dryly. Bucky, missing the point entirely, gave him a smile and then shook his head violently like a dog. Steve jumped back half a step but was still splattered heavily with bubbles and water. “Buck, towel, come on.” Grabbing a towel from the rail he threw it at Bucky’s face and, through the cloud of soap bubbles came the metal arm, snatching it out of the air easily. 

Steve turned away slightly to give the other man some semblance of privacy as Bucky stood up, fixing the towel around his waist and clambering gracelessly from the tub to drip all over Steve’s bath mat. How this guy ever silently entered people’s houses to dispatch them, I’ll never know. 

“You’re meant to towel off a bit before you get out, pal.” Steve gave him an exasperated grin and earned himself an easy slow smile in return. 

“Can I have another one?” Bucky asked, the corner of his mouth hitching up expectantly as he looked at Steve. The captain shrugged and tugged the remaining towel from the rail and chucked it across the room before turning back to the mirror and running a hand through his hair in an attempt to straighten it out again. 

“For your, hair, pal?” He asked absentmindedly, reaching for some gel on the top shelf. 

“No,” Bucky replied, his voice distant and Steve could tell he wasn’t really concentrating on him anymore. “For Pizza Dog.”

“For Piz-“ Steve spun faster than Stark eyeing a new gadget he wanted to take to pieces but only managed to catch a face full of soap bubbles and lukewarm water as the excitable Labrador exploded from the tub and into Bucky’s chest. Water slopped noisily over the side of the bath and collected in a considerable puddle across the floor tiles.

Steve, hand clapped across his mouth, watching Bucky who was now on the floor attempting to smother a wriggling mess of wet dog in a towel. He tried very hard not to focus on the fact that Lucky now smelled an awful lot like his favourite shampoo. Lucky’s tail thumped repeatedly into the gathered pool of water spread across the floor and it soaked the bottom of Steve’s pyjama legs a little more each time. 

Triangular breathing, Steve. Banner’s voice cracked across his mind as he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. It’s a great technique. You breathe in for ten seconds, hold for ten seconds, then release for ten seconds. Really calming. Trust me. 

Once Steve was relatively confident he wasn’t about to turn the proverbial green, rip the towel rail off the wall and launch it at Bucky’s head, he re-opened his eyes. The other man was sat on the floor, back up against the side of the bath, laughing wildly as the dog forced its way into his lap, licking Bucky’s face with enthusiasm. One towel was, thankfully, still more or less secured around Bucky’s waist. The other had been discarded, half in, half out of the bath. 

Not for the first time that morning, Steve felt his mouth crook into a half-smile despite himself. 

“FRIDAY, could you-“

“Already on their way, Captain.” The calming Irish brogue of Stark’s latest AI flooded the bathroom. 

“Alright.” Steve reached out a hand to the man sat, legs akimbo, on his bathroom floor. “You need to get dressed, pal. You do that, and I’ll fix some breakfast.”

Bucky appeared in Steve’s small kitchen twenty minutes later, and he didn’t have to look at dark-haired man to know that he’d be wearing some cast offs he’d found in Steve’s wardrobe. He’d read somewhere on the internet that sometimes people who’d been through trauma found it grounding to hang onto certain things that belonged to people they considered important. 

Steve thought it was possible. Sam thought Bucky was just too used to not having anything to call his own. Stark thought Bucky was a magpie who can’t keep his hands to himself, and people should stop trying to intellectualise it. Darcy didn’t care what was behind it. She just thought he looked sweet in Steve’s slightly-too-large shirts. 

“Tell me, Buck, why is it that you don’t you go and bother Darcy at the crack of dawn, jerk?” Steve said with a small laugh over his shoulder at the other man as he watched over the frying tomatoes, knowing full well that Darcy wouldn’t be roused at that time of the morning. Not easily, anyway. 

“Bother Darcy?” 

Steve stopped in his tracks at the tone of bewilderment in Bucky’s voice. Turning to look at the other man, he found him with a creased forehead and clouded eyes. 

“Oh Buck, no, I didn’t mean-“ Steve stuttered out. “You don’t bother Darcy. Well, not like that, anyway. Actually you kind of bother her a lot, but in a good wa-“ He stopped rambling, aware that his thoughts were getting away from him and that Bucky was starting to shake his head in confusion, not able to follow what he was saying. 

“I don’t-“ Bucky started, and Steve abandoned the frying pan altogether to pull his friend into a fierce one-armed hug. Bucky’s forehead dropped to Steve’s shoulder, and he clutched at him hard, trying to convey through his body what he’d messed up trying to explain in words. 

“You don’t bother her, Bucky.” Steve said emphatically. “Believe me.” Bucky’s metal arm gripped at him in response and they remained locked in the hug like carved statues; light and dark and two halves of the same world. 

Lucky, meanwhile, now a much brighter shade of yellow than he’d been previously, fluffy and smelling an awful lot like a leading mens branded shampoo, saw his chance and took it. He scrambled up onto the nearest breakfast bar stool and parked himself, front paws braced against the kitchen counter and wolfing down the pile of hot toast and butter Steve had forgotten he’d set out.


End file.
